Week 32: Oil tanks, water is power, and nuclear is expensive

Don’t buy oil. The price of oil on the world marked dipped last week. This should worry investors and oil companies more than it does, argues The Economist: “oil firms are assuming that decarbonisation will be limited and are thus overstating their assets. […] Oil firms could face a sticky mess of forced writedowns. […] In Europe oil bosses are preparing for lower prices […] investors are more worried about American firms.”

Oil companies forecasts vs. Paris goals. Dipstick? (C) The Economist

As Ethiopia is completing a dam on the Nile, Egyptians face potentially dire consequences. That North African water power struggle inevitably flows into the sea of Middle Eastern water conflict where it mingles with food scarce Arab countries and climate change worsening droughts writes Foreign Affairs in a lengthy analysis. Syria, Iraq and Turkey might be on the verge of water conflict, writes a Saudi newspaper.

“When the sounds of guns and war drums fade in Syria and Iraq, new tensions may arise because of water, especially in their conflict with Turkey, from which the Euphrates and Tigris rivers flow.”

“The EU has a window of opportunity to take further action to address wildlife crime within its own borders. In doing so, it will retain its global leadership role and continue pushing other countries to follow suit.”

Doctors have long known that air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels contributes to serious health problems like asthma, heart disease and cancer in millions of Americans—and billions of people worldwide. Over the past decades, doctors have also learned that air pollution is also seriously harming our brains and our mental abilities—especially among our children (including babies before birth), our elderly, and people living in poverty. For children, these harms include delays in development, reduced IQ, attention deficits, learning difficulties, behavioral problems, and autism, even when the exposure occurs before birth. In older adults, exposure to air pollution can contribute to dementia and possibly Alzheimer’s Disease. People living in poverty are often most exposed to air pollution, because of where they work and live.

While a carbon tax would help the economy of nuclear power, it is still “ridiculously expensive” and “uncompetitive” compared to solar power, Think Progress reports.

“Building a new nuclear power plant is ridiculously expensive as it will cost more than 1 trillion yen ($8.98 billion) to install just one nuclear power reactor […] It’s utterly uncompetitive.”

These are just the tip of last week’s iceberg of news about conflict over natural resources. Perhaps I’ll post the next week in the actual week it summarizes.